He’s back at it again. In a legislative email to constituents that was also published as Reform of prevailing wage law will benefit state, a letter in Glencoe’s McLeod County Chronicle. Gruenhagen argues that workers on small public infrastructure projects typical of greater Minnesota should be paid less so that the money would go farther:

One of my chief authored bills, HF508, updates prevailing wage provisions and raises the cost threshold for state government-funded projects that require prevailing wage. Currently, prevailing wage laws only apply to state subsidized projects that exceed a certain dollar amount.

Since infrastructure projects in Greater Minnesota tend to cost less than those in the Metro, raising this cost threshold will allow private contractors to bid on smaller projects without being forced to use union wage scales. The result will be that state tax dollars will go further in funding smaller infrastructure projects, which are more common in Greater Minnesota. . . .

I am a retired construction worker who spent his career building infrastructure in this state. A recent letter in this paper caught my attention. He attacked prevailing wage laws in Minnesota. For those who don’t know, prevailing wage is nothing more than local area standard wages for construction workers.

Gruenhagen called prevailing wage the “union wage.” That’s false. The local wage rate is established by looking at local wages paid on real jobs in our area, both union and nonunion workers benefit. He also fantasizes that we can save millions of dollars by getting rid of prevailing wages and that this will create more jobs. The real reason Gruenhagen wants to mess with prevailing wage is simple, and it has nothing to do with taxpayers. He is working for cheap labor contractors that are using him to get rid of the laws that prevent them from paying workers low wages on public projects. The fact is that Gruenhagen and the business owners he fights for think construction workers in our region make too much money. I’m offended by that.

These people are highly trained workers; they put their lives in danger and spend countless days on the road away from their families building this state. They earn their money, Glenn, every penny. . . .

Read the rest online at the paper.

However, Bluestem wonders whether Gruenhagen might not have to wait long for the cost of labor to come down, and in the spirit of his bill we offer a modest proposal.

That leaves Minnesota with a dilemma, as Republicans put the brakes on sentencing and probation reform, creating more prisoners than there are beds. Let’s put these unfortunate souls into chain gangs that would repair our state’s road and bridges for nothing more than the price of a few guards, orange jumpsuits (blaze pink for the lady offenders), barracks and eggs. Pay them nothing while they learn valuable skills and work habits and soon the price of infrastructure will plummet.

Image: Handsome convicts could reduce the price of Minnesota’s infrastructure beyond Representative Gruenhagen’s wildest dreams and there would probably be a place for prison ministry as well.

If you appreciate our posts and original analysis, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 33166 770th Ave, Ortonville, MN 56278) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post. Those wishing to make a small ongoing monthly contribution should click on the paypal subscription button.

Nov 06, 2016

Let's assume for the moment that Hillary Clinton will win Tuesday’s election and become our next president. More than that, let's assume she wins by a large margin. Both Donald Trump the candidate and the ugly views he has championed throughout this campaign are dealt a humiliating electoral defeat. Not just Democrats and independents but also a significant percentage of Republicans join together in rejecting Trump and all he has come to stand for.

If all that happens, can the tens of millions of us who have been appalled from the beginning by Trump’s open bigotry and misogyny now look forward to breathing a sigh of relief – an “our long national nightmare is over” moment, at last – on November 9th? Would a landslide defeat for Trump put this hateful chapter of our history behind us?

Hardly.

Hateful social and political forces, once given a degree of official permission and room to move in a society – and more so, once mass-mobilized around a genuine hope in their own near-term ascendance to power – do not recede because they lose one battle or one election. History just doesn’t work that way.

“I don’t think this movement is going away,” one fervent Trump supporter in Ohio, Judy Wright, recently told a Boston Globe reporter. Don Black, one of the founders of the white-nationalist website Stormfront, put it similarly: Trump “has sparked an insurgency, and I don’t think it’s going to go away.” On Saturday the New York Times reported on the growth of well-armed, far-right militia groups across the country. Many in these groups fear a Clinton initiative to forcibly take away their guns. Armed white men have already rallied, with their weapons on prominent display, at demonstrations in support of the Confederate flag and at public meetings on whether to allow the building of new mosques.

So let’s not kid ourselves. The ugly, unapologetically white-supremacist, anti-Muslim, and sexist forces now running loose in our body politic – they’ve always been there, of course, but they’re now out in the open again, and proud to be out in the open again – are going to be with us for a long time, no matter what happens on November 8th. In fact, their public and political expressions are likely to get uglier, their words and actions scarier, after the election – perhaps especially if it’s a landslide win for Hillary.

For Judy Wright (the Trump volunteer interviewed by the Globe), if her candidate loses, “all I know is our country is not going to be a country anymore. I’ve heard people talk about a revolution.” There has been a lot of discussion and coverage over the last couple weeks of the increasingly fevered warnings from Trump and his supporters that the election will be stolen from them, including Trump’s own already-infamous refusal at the final debate to commit to accepting the results of the election. His supporter Judy Wright captures the logic of the Trumpist view concisely: “If Hillary wins, it’s rigged.”

Making hate normal

But even these before-the-fact declarations of a conspiracy pale – in terms of scariness and cause for concern – in comparison to the violence-infused vision of another Trump supporter interviewed in the same Boston Globe piece: Dan Bowman, a contractor, told the Globe, “If [Hillary’s] in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it. We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed.”

Closer to home, when I posted a picture on social media a few days ago of my father – who served in the 101st Airborne in Vietnam and is the sort of political independent who’s still proud to have voted, twice, for Perot – standing with a lawn-sign that reads “Another veteran who could never vote for Donald,” one of my father’s cousins immediately replied with this: “I don’t believe [your dad] is foolish enough to vote Killary. Put the bitch in JAIL.”

What is truly distressing about this sort of reaction is not just the vile sentiments and words themselves but the way many of us are beginning to receive them: as a known, expected part of our political discourse. I find myself noticeably less shocked and angered by such comments, today, than I would have been if I’d seen them just a few weeks ago. I honestly can’t imagine that anyone I know would have posted such a statement two years ago……it just didn’t happen.

Even at the worst, scariest moments of anti-Muslim sentiment and jingoism under George W. Bush, I don’t remember there being widespread, self-assured use of language like this. I don’t think anywhere near as many people with hateful thoughts felt comfortable or licensed to broadcast those thoughts publicly. But now this kind of hateful, often violent, often sexist, racist, anti-Muslim or xenophobic speech is becoming normal.

Many educators, journalists, and academics have expressed concerns recently about the effect Trump’s words (and the words of his supporters) are having on children. You’ve already read, I’m sure, about the “Build the wall!” chants at high school sports events with Latino athletes. But did you know that two-thirds of teachers surveyed in a recent Southern Poverty Law Center study reported that their minority students have expressed fear about what might happen to them or their families after this election? Teachers reported kids struggling to make sense of their new belief, based on the invective of the presidential campaign, that “everyone hates them.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Trump’s focus from the first day of his campaign on maligning Mexican-Americans, many teachers reported Latino students expressing fears of deportation. (Teachers also reported white kids using “You’ll be deported!” as a new playground taunt against Latinos, and white kids using “Dirty Mexican” as a new insult against other white kids in schools with no Latino students.) But Latino kids were not alone in expressing this fear: several teachers reported that Black students expressed the belief that they could “be deported to Africa” or enslaved.

We will not know all the effects the normalization of Trump’s hate-speech has had on our society for many years, until we can look back on all this with some perspective and – let’s pray – a renewed sense of shock that such things were actually uttered, as late as 2016, by the nominee of one of the country’s two main political parties. Without knowing the specifics yet of all the effects they’ve had, we can be confident both that they are extensive and that they are felt especially deeply by young people who are still shaping their understanding of the society they’re part of and their own place (or not) within it.

What happens when hope is gone?

As difficult as it’s been to watch the newly-legitimized forces of hatefulness and division in action over the last few months – to hear the unvarnished bigotry and misogyny of what so many of our fellow citizens, even our friends and family members, have apparently been longing for many years to openly say to their Black, brown, female, Muslim, disabled, or in-any-other-way-different-from-themselves neighbors – we have to remember that what we’ve been watching and hearing so far is actually a version of these forces infused with hope.

They’ve rallied around Trump’s candidacy, seen a real prospect for dramatic and (in their view) positive national transformation in having him becoming president. If he loses – and even more so, if he loses big – the hope that has been attached to their efforts until now will be largely extinguished, leaving only the deep resentments, the reflexive blaming of varied “others,” the regular denial of simple and obvious facts. The rancor.

We’ve heard Trump celebrate vigilantism before. Most memorably, he offered to pay the legal bills for a white male supporter who sucker-punched a Black man protesting at one of his rallies. In making the offer, he explained that the assaulter “obviously loves his country.” Trump’s crowds have loved this rhetoric and his many threats and “jokes” about physical violence against dissenters, throughout his presidential campaign.

Even if the election proves a landslide, a complete repudiation of Trump’s candidacy, tens of millions of Americans will – despite all the horribly offensive things he has done and said – have enthusiastically voted for Trump on November 8th. We need to all try to grapple with that reality – not just with our bewilderment, anger or incredulity about it, but with a clear-eyed recognition of what it’s likely to mean for us as a polity in the months and years to come.

Where do you think those tens of millions of people will take their activism and energy, their sense of grievance and anger, after a loss – especially if they believe in a conspiracy theory pushed by Trump about the election being rigged?

I am genuinely frightened about the kinds of violence, vigilantism, and other forms of abuse against “others” (i.e., anyone who is not a white male straight non-disabled Christian) we may see in the weeks and months after the election.

Indeed, the chaos of individual vigilantism or mob violence could come as soon as Election Day, if some of his supporters heed his many calls for them to go looking for non-existent voter fraud in what he calls “other” polling places. (In case you can’t guess what he means by “other” polling places, here’s a line from a recent Trump rally speech: “Take a look at Philadelphia, what’s been going on, take a look at Chicago, take a look at St. Louis. Take a look at some of these cities, where you see things happening that are horrendous.”)

Crowd pleaser

There’s a revealing, horrifying story Trump repeatedly told on the campaign trail earlier this year. His crowds thrilled to it every time. It’s apocryphal, has been proved pure fiction, but of course Trump didn’t let that stop him. It’s about General John Pershing, when he was serving the U.S. Army in the Philippines in the aftermath of the 1899-1902 war. I think it’s best to let Trump speak for himself here in telling it (from the transcript of a February 19, 2016 rally in North Charleston, South Carolina):

You know, I read a story. It’s a terrible story, but I’ll tell you…..should I tell you, or should I not? [Cheers] Early in the century, last century, General Pershing – did you ever hear? rough guy, rough guy – and they had a terrorism problem. And you know there’s the whole thing with swine and animals and pigs and you know the story, they don’t like that. And they were having a tremendous problem with terrorism. And by the way, this is something you can read about in the history books. Not a lot of history books, because they don’t like teaching this. And General Pershing was a rough guy. … They had terrorism problems, just like we do. And he caught fifty terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the fifty terrorists, and he took fifty men and he dipped fifty bullets in pigs’ blood. You heard that, right? He took fifty bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood. And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the fifty people, and they shot forty-nine of those people. And the fiftieth person, he said: You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for twenty-five years there wasn’t a problem. Okay? Twenty-five years, there wasn’t a problem.

It remains difficult for me to believe – even with all the subsequent revelations of offensive, despicable things this man has said – that these are actually the words of the endorsed candidate for president of one of our two main political parties.

More important, it’s difficult to believe how much his audiences loved this story.

This is not a case of a story being used to illustrate some interesting aspect of the past, or to raise questions about the present, or to give depth or color to things we already know. Instead, this is a story with an unequivocal, bang-you-over-the-head moral. Trump expected the lesson to be clear to his rally crowds, and I’m confident it was. I hope it’s equally clear to you. The prescription here is for unapologetically brutal violence against “others” – in this case, specifically Muslims. The prescription is not just for violence but for relishing cruelty.

There have been many far bigger moments – the bragging-about-sexual-assault tape with Billy Bush; the refusal in advance to accept the results of the election; the attacks on Alicia Machado, the Khans, and so many others – that have defined Trump for voters in recent weeks. But I think this story about Gen. Pershing – a complete fabrication, like so much of what Trump says – captures better than any other moment in the campaign the frighteningly ignorant worldview this candidate espouses and the danger our country faces now that tens of millions of his supporters have come to believe that it’s acceptable to utter such racist, ignorant, bloodlust-infused nonsense in public.

Because here’s the most important thing: what’s scary about Trump isn’t Trump.

There have always been cranks, avowed white nationalists, and assorted conspiracy-theorists saying the same sorts of things Trump is now saying. What’s different and very scary right now is that tens of millions of Americans are rallying openly to their cause.

We’ve all become so focused – transfixed even – on the daily videos of this awful man and the shocking, horrible things he says that we are missing the larger story. To understand what’s really significant about this moment in our history, we need to turn our attention away from Donald Trump. We need to turn it toward the people in his rally crowds.

When Trump told the bullets-in-pigs’-blood story at rallies earlier this year, his crowds would become delirious with glee. Loud as hell, with roaring cheers, applause, laughter. They were exultant. Ecstatic.

More recently, we’ve all seen the footage of his supporters chanting things like “Lock her up!” and “Trump that bitch!”

These are the forces we are going to be dealing with in the weeks and months to come, after Election Day is behind us. There are tens of millions of people looking forward with great hope, today, to voting for Donald Trump on Tuesday, with an active embrace of his unapologetic racism, sexism and hate. Pandora’s box is open.

Regardless of whether Trump decides to parlay his fame into a new television station or retreats into real estate, whether he retires from the political scene (incredibly unlikely, but we can dream, right?) or continues as the standard-bearer and mouthpiece for a mass movement opposing the Hillary Clinton administration, all those people shouting “Trump that bitch!” at his rallies – and all the family members or friends I’m sure I’m not alone in having, suddenly saying things like “Put the bitch in JAIL” on our Facebook pages – are not going anywhere. They are emboldened and angry and ready to take action.

Those of us who are appalled by their open bigotry and misogyny must be prepared, starting the very day after this election – or maybe even the day of, if his army of “poll watchers” emerges as an actual force – to fight back vigorously against jingoism, ignorance, racism, misogyny, hate.

Taking matters into their own hands

Many observers today are far too quick to dismiss the possibility of mob violence and vigilantism emerging out of Trump’s base of supporters. Large-scale, systematic white mob violence against people of color, as a regular occurrence, is only two generations back in our history. (And systematic violence by whites against people of color continues today with considerable ferocity – it just tends to manifest now through official channels like the police, not vigilantism.)

As Isabel Wilkerson observes in The Warmth of Other Suns, her Pulitzer-winning history of the Great Migration: “Contrary to modern-day assumptions, for much of the history of the United States – from the Draft Riots of the 1860s to the violence over desegregation a century later – riots were often carried out by disaffected whites against groups perceived as threats to their survival.” Her account of white riots against Black migrants who were seeking housing in white neighborhoods of northern cities in the 1960s – including destruction of apartments and houses, firebombing, stoning, overturned police cars, and rampaging mobs as large as 4,000, in riots that sometimes lasted for several days – is truly chilling to read.

I fear that aggrieved, angry Trump supporters will seek to take our country back to such times – will be inciting violence, not just in words but in deeds, against Muslims, Latinos, Blacks, women, or anyone that’s not part of their vision of the America that used to be “great.” Whether Trump concedes or not will of course play a huge role in shaping whether his supporters accept the legitimacy of the election. But even if Trump immediately concedes – perhaps because it’s an historic rout – I don’t think we should expect the racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and hate given new permission and room to move in our society by his campaign to go quietly into the night. Instead, I think we should expect them to flare up in dramatic and violent new forms.

Maybe I’m wrong, and this is all overblown and unnecessary. I pray that is so.

But if it turns out I’m not wrong – and after all the ugly, unpredicted twists and turns of this campaign since its “Mexicans are rapists” start, how could you possibly be sure? – we need to be ready to fight, and fight like hell, in defense of American decency and diversity, in defense of the dignity and safety of all people, the second Hillary wins.

Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best

Between now and Tuesday, we of course all need to just buckle down and work as hard as we possibly can to win this election – knocking doors, making calls, busting our asses to achieve a decisive, message-sending margin in the presidential race and to win all the other vitally-important state, local and federal races we’re engaged in. The world is anxiously waiting to see what message the majority of Americans send in this election. The larger the margin, the stronger the message. And frankly we need to send a message to ourselves as well – that there is still something kind and good and hopeful about our country, something worth standing up and fighting for. That hate is not one of our core values.

But at the same time we do all that work to win on Nov. 8th, we should be preparing ourselves for Nov. 9th. Progressives should be getting prepared to hold Hillary to the many strong policy positions she’s taken over the course of her campaign, to provide an active pull from the left in a way we failed utterly to provide in the first couple years after President Obama’s election in 2008. Just as important, we should be preparing for the possibility that some of Trump’s supporters respond after this election with not just vitriol but violence.

Getting ourselves ready to deal with a new wave of ugliness and vigilantism after the election, but then finding out things are unexpectedly calm, would be a glorious way for us all to experience the next few weeks. But facing a new wave of ugliness and vigilantism unprepared, shocked by it out of a complacent celebration of an electoral repudiation of Trump, would be the opposite: hellish. It could set us back in many different ways all at once. So the rational choice right now is to get prepared, while hoping the preparations prove to have been needless.

Those of us unlikely to ever find ourselves under direct attack by the forces of hate and division – straight white males like me, for example – have a particular responsibility to stand up and fight back. Why? There’s a certain justice – if most of the hatefulness and violence comes, as it almost certainly will, from white men – in having white men be the ones to go confront it. And on a practical level, we are the ones most likely to be able to do so without jeopardizing our safety.

A brief and personal illustration: the lunchroom supervisor at my kids’ elementary school – an unfailingly kind, generous, loving young man, beloved by all the kids whose lives he touched and known by them as “Mr. Phil,” Philando Castile – was murdered by the police while he strived to follow the very letter of the law. In contrast, if I choose to openly break the law in order to stand up for something I believe in politically (which I’ve done a few times, so I speak from direct experience), it is almost certain that I will be able to do so without ever fearing for my own physical well-being.

So here’s my suggestion about what we should do, after this election, if it turns out I’m right about the ugliness soon to come: we should take seriously the recent words of the clearest, strongest, most moral voice in our country right now, Michelle Obama. “An attack on any one of us is an attack on all of us,” she said in a speech last week. Let’s take that literally. When and if any aggrieved Trump supporter first commits an act of violence against any Latino, Black, Native, Asian-American, female, LGBTQ, disabled, Muslim, Jewish, or in any other way “othered” fellow American, we should show up by the thousands – white men especially – in that place as soon as we hear about it, to nonviolently condemn what they’ve done, to commit ourselves to peaceful resistance against all such attacks, and to dramatically, massively demonstrate to other people who might be thinking about engaging in such acts what sort of response they can expect if they follow through.

Again, I sincerely hope I’m wrong in having these fears of what’s to come after this election. I hope we can all just celebrate a decisive victory, put this ugly chapter behind us, restore a basic shared commitment to civility and truthfulness in our politics, and move on with the many debates and policy initiatives needed to make progress and win justice.

But if, sadly, I’m right about the violence and vigilantism to come, and if we do manage to rise to the occasion and do something dramatic to put a stop to it, when we get there let’s recite together a few lines from Langston Hughes – in the faith and hope that we can somehow still build a country, almost a half-century after he died, that is worthy of his faith in it:

O, let America be America again – The land that never has been yet – And yet must be – the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine – the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME – Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose– The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America!

O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath – America will be!

Phillip Cryan holds a Masters in Public Policy from the Goldman School at the University of California, Berkeley. He is Executive Vice President of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, a union of more than 35,000 hospital, clinic, nursing home, and home care workers.

Photo: Phillip Cryan, taking part in a 2011 protest over bank foreclosures on homes.

If you appreciate our posts and original analysis, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 33166 770th Ave, Ortonville, MN 56278) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post.

Prevailing wage sets the hourly wage employers must pay workers on construction projects that receive state money. Gruenhagen said the mandated pay hurts state projects, and local projects that receive state money.

“Minnesota is among the four states with the highest prevailing wage law,” he said.

After he takes out "artificial" prevailing wages, maybe he'll go after worker safety measures and restrictions on child labor, both of which drive up the costs employers face. Perhaps prison chain gangs doing road work, rather than reopening the closed private prison in Appleton, could replace honest construction workers while we're at it. For a bit of porridge and bread crusts--roads would be repaired, prison overcrowding solved.

Photo: Glenn Gruenhagen arguing for his bill to make sure people use the bathroom assigned to their biological gender at birth. Maybe Minnesota construction workers could get second jobs as bathroom monitors if both of Gruenhagen's "reforms" succeed. Photo by Tom Olmscheid via MinnPost.

If you appreciate our posts and original analysis, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 33166 770th Ave, Ortonville, MN 56278) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post.

Jun 10, 2016

Calling for the elimination of the IRS, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development didn't help Ted Cruz slowdown the relentless Donald Trump.

While meeting with potential voters at Beltrami Electric Cooperative, Hughes described his background as a U.S. Air Force veteran, his political stance as a constitutional conservative and outlined his plan to reduce the size of the federal government

"My No. 1 theme is to make the U.S. government smaller and send much of what's done at the federal level back to the states," said Hughes, a Karlstad resident.

To do so, Hughes said if elected to Congress, he would want to eliminate five of the 15 federal government departments including education, energy, commerce, labor and housing and urban development. Despite his ideas, though, Hughes said he isn't telling voters that he will get everything accomplished on Capitol Hill.

With roots in the 1880s, the DOL was created when President William Howard Taft signed the Organic Act of the Department of Labor on March 4, 1913, having been bullied into it. A DOL timeline notes:

After much opposition, President William Howard Taft signs the Organic Act creating the U.S. Department of Labor. Signed during Taft's last hours in office, it is followed shortly thereafter by President Woodrow Wilson's appointment of William B. Wilson (no relation) as the first secretary of labor.

"I feel I'm much more conservative than Hinson," Hughes said. "I want to eliminate entire departments, make government much smaller and taxes much lower, whereas she will talk about streamlining and making efficiencies."

Photo: Woodrow Wilson (left) and William Howard Taft (right) on the day the Organic Bill of the Department of Labor was signed and government balloon to proportions that mirrored Taft's awesome Progressive Era stache.

Bluestem Prairie is conducting its summer fundraising drive. If you appreciate our posts and original analysis, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or use the paypal button below:

The CCA hire illustrates not only the power of a national corporation, but the lucre offered by the revolving door for retiring law makers.

CCA, which owns the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, closed since 2010, is hoping to gain a revenue stream from an economic development scheme cooked up by Rep. Tim Miller and Swift County, with a paid assist from Goff Public to house male offenders. The prison would be leased, although there's some talk of purchasing the facility. We wrote about the plan extensively last year.

We'll all probably see Gephardt's move into this market framed in the press as a move to given more DFL support. That would be possible only if one ignores Gephardt's clients for the past eleven years. Bluestem predicts that Minnesota press and the public relations firms that love them will do exactly that.

Gephardt's last years of congressional service in the House (1977 to 2005) overlap with Governor Dayton's single term in the U.S.Senate (2001-2007), so perhaps that's was a selling point for purchasing former congressman Gephardt's services as a lobbyist.

Or maybe it's just an exercise in nostalgia.

A minimal amount of digging reveals that Gephardt quickly abandoned his legislative track record and caused as soon as he got on the other side of the revolving door from Congress to K Street. Do those protesting at Wednesday's hearing about the criminal justice system claim the system is rigged against them? They might be on to something.

As a member of Congress, Dick Gephardt often spoke passionately about the need for the United States to recognize as genocide the mass deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians under the Turkish government that began one century ago.

But as a lobbyist for Turkey since leaving Congress in 2005, Gephardt, a Democrat, has taken the opposite side. His behind-the-scenes work has been cited as a factor in the annual failure of Congress to recognize the Armenian genocide.

Justice Department records show that Gephardt’s lobbying firm has been paid more than $8 million since 2008 to fight the declaration and represent Turkey on other contentious issues, including repatriation of Christian holy sites seized over the last century in that Muslim nation.

Each year, Armenian Americans remember the massacres of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in the aftermath of World War I. And each year, Congress becomes embroiled in a bitter debate between Armenia and Turkey over whether to label the episode as genocide.

The dispute has set off a lobbying frenzy this year in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) is scheduled to hold a vote Thursday on a nonbinding resolution that calls on President Obama to formally refer to the 1915 massacre as genocide and to use the term during an annual address on the topic next month. . . .

The resolution has prompted an aggressive push by the government of Turkey and its lobbying firm led by former House majority leaderRichard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), who had urged recognition of the Armenian genocide when he was in Congress. Public-relations firm Fleishman-Hillard also has a contract with Turkey worth more than $100,000 a month, records show.

On May 5, 2010, former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), wrote to Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, about a possible meeting for Boyner with the secretary of state. After leaving government service, Gephardt had founded his own lobbying shop and also did consulting work for bigger firms. In 2007, The New York Times reported that he was a top lobbyist for Turkey.

“I have been asked by the Turkish Embassy, who I represent, to request a meeting with Secretary Clinton for Mrs. Umit Boyner, a prominent Turkish business woman,” wrote Gephardt in his email to Mills. “Such a meeting could be whenever and wherever you determine most convenient for the Secretary — either in Washington, DC or Turkey.”

Remember Dick Gephardt, the former House House Majority Leader, mortal foe of NAFTA and overall friend of the working class? He’s a lobbyist now of course, and his firm, Gephardt Group, has boomed following the Democratic takeover of congress. Revenues for the firm — which helps clients “improve Labor Relations, develop Political and Public Policy Strategies and enhance Business Results by gaining access to new markets or partners” climbed from $500,000 in 2007 to $1.5 million last year.

Gephardt’s clients include Boeing, Goldman Sachs and Waste Management Inc. and just two days ago he signed up the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The disclosure form doesn’t say how much Gephardt will be paid and only vaguely describes what issues he’ll be working on. . . .

As a politician, he was a champion of progressive reform. Now he lobbies for its enemies. . . . .

While Gephardt spent most of his twenty-eight years in national Democratic politics quietly promoting and voting with establishment interests, he is best known for his friendship with labor and advocacy for universal healthcare during two presidential runs. In 2003 he harshly condemned corporate crime, which he said “ruined people’s lives for selfishness and greed,” and launched his candidacy claiming, “Every proposal I’m making, every idea I’m advancing has a single, central purpose: to revive a failing economy and give working Americans the help and security they need.” So why, six years later, was he on Capitol Hill representing one of the biggest players in the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression? And further, why was he recently working for Visa to kill credit card reform, helping Peabody Energy stymie climate change legislation and consulting for UnitedHealth Group alongside Tom Daschle to block meaningful healthcare reform? ....

On January 1, 2005–before Gephardt’s term had even expired–the Congressman’s son-in-law signed papers to form a consultancy firm based in Delaware called Gephardt and Associates (now the Gephardt Group). But for most of 2005 it lay dormant as Gephardt joined corporate boards and advised a few big-name companies. Banned from lobbying Congress for a year, he soon discovered there were places outside Washington that needed influencing.

Like California: when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced legislation that would have opened the door to increased infrastructure privatization in January 2006, Democrats in the legislature balked. So Goldman Sachs, standing to benefit from these policies, sent Gephardt as an emissary to Sacramento, hoping to persuade the state to monetize infrastructure by levying tolls and then leasing roads to private investors for decades. “I’ve done some work with Goldman Sachs in their capacity as adviser to both the City of Chicago and now the State of Indiana,” Gephardt told California lawmakers at a February 14, 2006, hearing, before extolling the virtues of infrastructure privatization if “negotiated properly.”

Several years on, the results have been lackluster. In certain cases, poorly negotiated contracts with little oversight have allowed high tolls and, because of failure to estimate the true value of the infrastructure, have given the private sector windfall profits at the expense of local communities. Transit grids have been fragmented, causing unpredictable congestion, leading to significant litigation.

Gephardt has remained committed to the cause of infrastructure privatization, visiting Nevada’s legislature in 2007, and at last year’s Democratic National Convention joining bankers from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to advocate for the practice on a panel discussion. By then, however, Gephardt had a new day job. In June 2005 he joined DLA Piper, a large Washington lobbying firm, as a consultant. He would not lobby, he told the Washington Post at the time; he would just offer “strategic advice.” His new boss had other ideas, however, telling the trade publication Influence a few days later, “Once he’s able to, he’ll lobby if that’s something that might be useful.” ...

Former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) has been hired to lobby for a major food-services company that has faced criticism from a powerful union.

Gephardt and Tom O’Donnell, his former chief of staff, have registered to lobby on “labor/management related matters” by Sodexo, according to lobbying disclosure records.

The French-owned company has been embroiled in a battle with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) over a labor organizing campaign, and Gephardt is known for his labor ties.

SEIU is running online ads that show videos of Sodexo employees complaining about worker conditions at the company. They have organized public protests of Sodexo and argue the company is paying its employees wages below poverty levels. . . .

The contracts with Gephardt’s lobbying group and Trammell and Co. represent the first time the food-services company has turned to outside lobbyists to work in Washington, according to a review of records by The Hill. Overall, the group has spent more than $5.6 million on internally hired lobbyists since 2002. . . .

Since creating the firm in 2005, Gephardt and his team have been hired to lobby for some of the most prominent names in business and finance. Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Visa and others have all hired Gephardt at some point, according to lobbying disclosure records.

Those lobbying contracts, however, have earned him the ire of labor groups. Last month, SEIU members protested Gephardt along with other well-known Democratic lobbyists, including Steve Elmendorf and Tony Podesta, in a large K Street rally.

Last week, an inside-the-Beltway newsletter, First Street, published a unique top-ten list. It reveals which former members of Congress are among the most important Washington lobbyists. . . .

A case in point is Richard Gephardt, who represented a working-class district in south St. Louis for 28 years. Gephardt served one year as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, six as Democratic majority leader, and eight as Democratic minority leader. Through much of his congressional career he was a staunch ally of organized labor (his father was a member of the Teamster’s Union) fighting for the interests of trade unions on issue after issue. . . .

Since leaving public office, he has built a multimillion-dollar annual income as one of Washington’s premier lobbyists.

Forty-two former members of Congress sit on Fortune 500 boards. But only one - Gephardt - sits on four.

A two-time presidential candidate, he is a director of Ford Motor, US Steel, Centene and CenturyLink. . . .

His lobby firm, Gephardt Group, represents nine Fortune 500 companies. The firm booked nearly $1.7 million in lobby fees from those clients last year. Its total haul for lobbying work was almost $4.8 million.

Gephardt also serves as an adviser to Goldman Sachs, a client of Gephardt Group.

Last year he personally collected $1.2 million in compensation for his Fortune 500 board activities. His stock holdings in those companies are worth more than $5.6 million.

Muckety provided a map of this web:

We're hoping our friends at the state office buildings manage to get selfies with Gephardt and the lawmakers he's visiting.

Jan 22, 2016

The Minnesota AFL-CIO endorsed Republican Jim Abeler in the special election for state Senate District 35. It wasn't surprising, since Abeler supported overriding former Governor Tim Pawlenty's veto of a gas tax in 2008 and the district is reliably Republican.

At the time of her election, Workday Minnesota reported New Minneapolis labor federation president brings fresh perspective. The creation of an independent PAC with labor roots for a Republican in Minnesota is unusual. It's also prudent to recognize that transportation requires dedicated long-term funding, not temporary shifting around of pots of money or bonding, and organized construction workers appreciate a dependable revenue stream.

Dayton said he had a private meeting Thursday with DFL lawmakers to discuss transportation funding issues. He said he apologized to them “for having to blurt out” his assessment of the gas tax six weeks ago.

House Republicans want to use surplus money and dedicate existing sales tax revenues to transportation.

Dayton said he’ll do all he can to push back against that approach.

We'll keep an eye out on this PAC's spending when the First Report of Receipts and Expenditures (Period covered: 1/1 through 3/31/2016) are due on April 14, according the calendar for PAC disclosures on the CFB's website. It's possible that Citizens for Abeler spent money on the January 12 primary, since "The treasurer of a political committee or political funds must register within 14 days of raising or spending in excess of $750" to nominate or elect candidates, according to the CFB's website.

Image: An Abeler lit piece via his website. This piece is not from the newly-registered PAC.

If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie's original reporting and analysis, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or use the paypal button below:

Olmsted County rail consultant Chuck Michael said he was not paid by the private company seeking to build a high-speed rail line from Rochester to the Twin Cities.

Michael sent an email to the Post-Bulletin following an article published that reported Michael did some consulting work for North American High Speed Rail Group last year. In the email, Michael wrote, "you should be interested to know that my total compensation from NAHSR was $0."

In an interview, Michael said he does a lot of voluntary, pro bono work and didn't think about mentioning this was one of those cases. . . .

This week the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development announced $461,000 in three new grants from the Job Creation Fund that will lead to 45 new jobs and business investments totaling $12.1 million.

One grant, to Anderson-Crane Co. totaling $120,821, will lead to its investment of $1.24 million in a new facility, creating 12 new, full-time jobs paying between $13 and $20 an hour.

While this is great news for the people of Litchfield, if Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City, had his way, this grant would never have happened. He fought the creation of this fund by voting against it two years ago. And again this year he voted to cut the funding for it by 25 percent. Why wouldn’t he want to expand businesses and create well-paying jobs here in Minnesota? . . .

The Meeker County Board of Commissioners has approved of a resolution of support for Anderson Crane as it applies for the Job Creation Fund Program. The state program provides incentives for businesses to expand.

Meeker County Economic Development Director David Krueger says Anderson Crane plans to double the size of its facility in Darwin Township – just east of Litchfield – with a 1-point-3 million dollar project. . . .

Are good jobs with decent pay for Greater Minnesotans what the Republicans are scorning when they kvetch about "metro-centric" thinking?

Oct 08, 2015

Now that the dust and hard feelings have settled in the scrappy DFL primary in the special election to fill the seat left vacant by by the death of Representative David Dill, the Tower Timberjay revisits the "man camps" question.

As anyone who paid attention to the race knows, Bill Hansen’s suggestion that a copper-nickel boom would bring man camps to house workers, and that those camps would bring increased crime to the area, was widely derided as an attack on union construction workers and PolyMet.

That attack line was far-fetched from the beginning, and I see very little evidence in the poll returns to suggest it had much impact on voters. Hansen always had an uphill battle simply because of population and geography, and his campaign was well aware of it. . . .

Hansen’s claim that a copper-nickel boom (of the kind envisioned by Frank Ongaro of Mining Minnesota) would bring man camps is inarguably true, as was his prediction that such camps would bring social problems to the area.

Indeed, the suggestion would come as no surprise to anyone who took part in the planning efforts conducted by the East Range Readiness Committee back in the mid-2000s, since housing for workers and their impact on communities, was one of the major topics of discussion. It wasn’t Hansen raising those concerns at the time. It was then-Hoyt Lakes Mayor Marlene Pospeck, a copper-nickel mining supporter, who was calling the potential for man camps a “big concern,” according to a Minnesota Public Radio report from 2006.

The story continued: “Construction workers are often set up in makeshift trailer camps— places Pospeck says are known for rowdy behavior, frequent police calls, and an increased need for social services. It’s one thing to deal with one major construction project, but two or three or more could be a huge strain on the local communities.”

No one attacked Pospeck for disrespecting the Iron Range building trades for raising such obvious concerns. But then, it wasn’t the political season, when little things like facts and context are often tossed out the window. . .

. . .We can argue about how severe those problems might be, but anyone who suggests Hansen simply invented this concern, or was slamming local construction workers, should familiarize themselves with a little Iron Range history.

Helmberger looks back to the 1950s taconite boom and more in a column worth reading.

Photo: 1st mining camp near Mountain Iron 1893, via Mining Artifacts. Probably not what anybody meant during the primary, but it's a cool old picture.

If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or use the paypal button below:

Sep 29, 2015

In Tuesday's primary for the special election in Minnesota House District 3A, International Falls labor activist and Koochiching County Commissioner Rob Ecklund has won the DFL nomination by defeating Cook County outfitter Bill Hansen by 6.32 percent.

I’m going to make a prediction not to prove how right I am, but to test how wrong I am.Ecklund 35, Hansen 34, Omerza 22, Johnson 8.

As the results indicate, Omerza under-performed significantly from Brown's prediction, illustrating the organizing strength of labor and the newspaper endorsements for Ecklund. Omerza's fundraising was flat, and Ecklund's supporters took full advantage of the reframing of a Hansen criticism of sulfide mining into an attack on construction workers.

Brown and other political observers are predicting an easy win for Ecklund in the December 8 primary, and barring a highly unlikely turn of fate, the seat is Ecklund's in the heavily DFL district.

Sep 26, 2015

After buying radio time to run an ad attacking Bill Hansen in the DFL primary for the Minnesota House District 3A special election, the Minnesota Jobs Coalition Legislative Fund, a conservative ideologue PAC, has sent a direct mail piece to voters attacking another of the four DFL contenders, Koochiching County Commissioner Rob Ecklund.

We post the front above: here's the back of the over sized postcard. We've covered the address of the recipient:

UPDATE: Our source received yet another Minnesota Jobs Coalition attack on Ecklund on Saturday. It's essentially the same attack:

The International Falls labor activist is attacked for being "just another politician looking our for himself" who raised county taxes, then gave himself a raise. The mail piece may pre-figure the Minnesota Jobs Coalition's coming message in 2016--that of allegedly free-spending, self-dealing Democrats--or it might signal coming support for the "independent" candidate in the general election.

Because 2015 is an "off-year" in the election cycle, under Minnesota law, political action committees and political parties (and candidates who aren't up for election) need only file a year-end report due on February 1.

The December special election will be over by then.

Other direct mail in the race

The reader who sent us the scan of the mail piece noted other mail pieces the household received:

One from the Rob Ecklund committee Three from the Bill Hansen committee One from the Eric Johnson committee One from the Heidi Omerza committee

The voter also received three mail Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) from conservation groups that did not endorse or slam any candidate and a non-partisan GOTV card from the League of Women Voters.

For the primary, at least, it appears had only the MJC is sending negative mailings.

A flood of individual donations have left Tofte business owner Bill Hansen well out in front in the money race in the District 3A special election. That’s according to campaign finance reports filed by the four DFL candidates this week ahead of the Tuesday primary. The reports include contributions and expenditures through Sept. 15.

Hansen’s report listed $32,978 in individual donations, with no contributions from lobbyists or political action committees.

Hansen’s haul dwarfed that of his nearest rival, Koochiching County Commissioner Rob Ecklund, of International Falls, who reported $9,201 in individual donations. Ecklund also reported a $5,000 personal loan to the campaign and $950 in contributions from lobbyists, the largest being $500 from Gary Cerkvenik’s Costin Group. . . .

While anti-Hansen commenters on the article claim that Hansen's money of course comes from Twin Cities environmentalists, that asserion begs the question. Helmberger reviews the data:

Campaign finance rules require campaigns to identify all contributors who donate over $200, and that helps the public to see from where candidates are receiving their support.

Of the 43 donors listed on Hansen’s report, who contributed a total of $19,462, 26 (60 percent) live within the district and contributed a total of $10,312, or 53 percent of the total. The rest of the contributions came from elsewhere in Minnesota.

Ecklund’s report lists $4,550 in itemized contributions, including eight contributors. Of those, 60 percent live within the district, although the majority (55 percent) of Ecklund’s listed campaign cash came from outside the district. About a third of his individual contributions came from residents of Tennessee, making Ecklund the only candidate with out-of-state contributions.

We reported yesterday on the rising tumult in the race for next Tuesday’s DFL primary in the House 3A special election. Earlier this week the Iron Range’s largest newspaper attacked candidate Bill Hansen on some rather overdramatic accusations that he was speaking against unions in his criticism of copper-nickel mining rhetoric and boom-chasing economics. The next day, establishment Iron Range forces seemed to rally to Hansen’s opponent, labor favorite Rob Ecklund.

Brown walks us through the back and forth, then notes:

. . .The most important part of the story is the degree to which mining supporters seem outright panicked about Hansen’s candidacy.

I have concluded that this is really about power and who has a seat at the table when the spoils of a resource-extraction economy are divvied up. Of course, every Iron Range election for 100 years has been just that. We only seem intermittently aware of the fact.

Fittingly, since so much of our early 21st Century Iron Range seems reminiscent of our early 20th Century Iron Range, we have a righteous rebuttal from a rival newspaper. ...

Check out the Brown post and the Timjerjay articles he recommends.

Photos: the Minnesota Jobs Coalition attack mail against Rob Ecklund.

If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or use the paypal button below:

Sep 20, 2015

Note: This post is part of our continuing coverage of the effort to re-open the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, a private prison owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). For earlier coverage, check out the links at the bottom of the post.

The meeting is for the Prison Population Taskforce, an informal discussion by a group of stakeholders including the Senate Judiciary Committee, members of the House of Representatives, and officials from state and local agencies, among others. Rep. Tony Cornish will serve as the co-chair of the meeting

The Uptake will also be on hand to videotape the hearing, although it's uncertain whether the video news service will be able to livestream from the room.

Despite falling crime rates, Minnesota has the second highest growth in incarceration rate – up 42% since 2000. Now our state prison system is more than 500 inmates over capacity. The Department of Corrections is requesting $142 million to expand Rush City state prison. For-profit prison giant Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is angling to re-open their long-shuttered prison in Swift County, a 3 hour drive west of the Twin Cities. PR and lobbying firms like Goff Public are also profiting from this scramble.

As Minnesota's prison population has increased, so has the racial disparity. African Americans make up 35% of prisoners despite being just 6% of the state’s population. Native Americans are locked up at 10 times their share of the state’s residents.

As people of faith, we believe the expansion of for-profit incarceration in a racially unjust criminal justice system is a profound violation of human dignity. No one should profit off a father, a brother, a son who seeks forgiveness of their debts to society.

Please join ISAIAH in a Prayer Vigil outside the meeting room where the Prison Population Task Force will convene to discuss solutions to this issue.

The meeting is open to the public and you are free to stay and keep witness throughout the discussion. The meeting starts at 9:00am in Room 10 (lower level) of the State Office Building.

A "faith-based coalition of more than 100 member congregations that lets communities in Minnesota more effectively live out their faith in biblical justice and the common good," the group has also started a Groundswell petition, Tell Goff Public: Stop Promoting For-Profit Prisons. Follow the link to view the petition.

Goff Public is a metro-based public affairs and lobbying firm which was one of two firms to pitch their services to Swift County in its bid to get the private prison, owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) re-opened. CCA has faced relentless scrutiny nationally for profiting from captive populations.

For our earlier coverage of the plan to re-open the prison, check out the links below:

Sep 14, 2015

Note: This post is part of our continuing coverage of the effort to re-open the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, a private prison owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). For earlier coverage, check out the links at the bottom of the post.

In a tweet on Monday, ISAIAH MN, a faith-based social justice group, documented its meeting with Goff Public about the public affairs and lobbying firm's contract with Swift County to promote reopening the the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton.

As people of faith, we are gravely concerned about the potential expansion of our current prison system that unjustly and disparately impacts people of color. Minnesota has the second lowest rate of incarceration in the nation, yet has the second highest growth in incarceration rate – up 42% since 2000. This is despite falling crime rates. African Americans are vastly over-represented in our prisons, making up 35% of prisoners despite being just 6% of the state’s population. Native Americans are locked up at 10 times their share of the state’s residence.

We are shocked that Goff Public is working to promote the opening of a private, for-profit prison in Minnesota. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the largest and oldest private prison owner and operator in the US. Approximately 71,000 people are currently locked up in CCA facilities, which generated nearly $1 billion in profits over the past 5 years. In 2014, CCA profits amounted to $3,366 per individual man or woman incarcerated, while the top six executives collected nearly $12 million in total compensation.

As reported recently, CCA profits from the detention of toddlers and pregnant women. In addition, “the company’s prisons have been dogged by allegations of maltreatment, neglect, and abuse—as if the practice of detaining toddlers wasn’t controversial enough.”

Further, CCA has been found to operate prisons that were so substandard and unsafe for both prisoners and prison guards that in at least one case in Arizona the facility was deemed too unsafe for state auditors to visit.

This is abhorrent and unexcusable. Minnesota has no place for a company which employs these heinous practices. Even leasing property from this company is beyond the pale of moral acceptability.

We therefore call on you to cease and desist your efforts to promote the CCA facility in Appleton MN or any for-profit incarceration enterprise.

Sincerely,

ISAIAH

ISAIAH MN is no stranger to the western prairies, as members have been active lately in Willmar, advocating for restoring voting rights for people convicted of felonies who have served their terms.

For our earlier coverage of the plan to re-open the prison, check out the links below:

Sep 09, 2015

NOTE: Our update about the informal meeting of the Prison Population Taskforce is lower in the post [end note]

A local newspaper has published an in-depth article in which state senator Lyle Koenen, DFL-Clara City, and state representative Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, outline the prospects for blocking a proposal to bond for an expansion of the state prison at Rush City and open a shuttered private prison in Appleton instead.

After reading the article, the outlines of the efforts legislative strategy--for which Goff Public has secured a lobbying contract from Swift County--emerges.

Koenen asserts that a bonding proposal from the Department of Corrections has been "put out and it is just sitting there." The conservative Clara City Democrat casts doubt on the willingness of capital investment committee chair Senator Leroy Stumpf, DFL-Plummer, to adopt the proposal. Koenen also speaks of an effort to meet with the Department of Corrections about the CCA re-opening, as well as an informal working group of legislators from both chambers and parties to look at prison space.

The working group should meet sometime near the end of September, Koenen told the board. Bluestem will keep an eye out.

UPDATE 9/9/2015, 9: A reader active in the faith community sent us word that the Prison Population Taskforce will meet on Friday, September 25 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 10 of the State Office Building, according to the Minnesota Senate calendar. The notice reads:

The meeting is for the Prison Population Taskforce, an informal discussion by a group of stakeholders including the Senate Judiciary Committee, members of the House of Representatives, and officials from state and local agencies, among others. Rep. Tony Cornish will serve as the co-chair of the meeting.

We'll have more on the makeup of the task force as we get the list of members. Our source tells us that lobbyists are on the task force. It sound like more regulatory capture. [end update]

Miller posits that the Republican-controlled Minnesota House will have "little appetite" for bonding, and that "the one truth" is that Minnesota will need to house more inmates than there are currently beds for them. He noted that House legislative staff has been meeting with the Governor's office about re-opening the prison.

Photo: The now-shuttered Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, MN. The private prison is owned by Corrections Corporation of America. The for-profit corrections industry has been widely criticized as profiting from incarceration, in venues as varied as news media and the mostly current season of Orange is the New Black on Netflix.

If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen P.O. Box 108, Maynard MN 56260) or use the paypal button below:

Aug 28, 2015

The Swift County Monitor reported on Wednesday that state senator Lyle Koenen, DFL-Clara City, state representative Tim Miller, Swift County District One Commissioner Gary Hendrickx, and County board chair and District 3 Commissioner Pete Peterson met privately with representatives of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Goff Public about reopening the private prison in Appleton.

We embed the article below. The date of the meeting is not noted by the paper.

According to the article, Swift County believes that having CCA lease the facility to the State of Minnesota is a better option for the state than building new prison space. Swift County administrator Mike Pogge-Weaver told the paper that a lease for the prison would bring jobs to the area and keep the prisoners under state control.

Board Chair Peterson was less forthcoming about the details of the private meeting, which also included county and city staffers, as well as elected officials, lobbyists and representatives of the private prison behemoth. Peterson told the local paper:

"We had a very good discussion, a very interesting discussion, a very frank discussion, and that is all I am going to say at this time," Peterson said.

Bluestem hopes that somebody took notes.

For our earlier coverage of the plan to re-open the prison, check out the links below:

AFSCME Council 5 is considered a close ally to Governor Mark Dayton, as its October 2009 endorsement of the maverick candidate--who did not seek DFL endorsement at the party's 2010 convention--gave the veteran political leader's campaign a boost.

Even within leadership in Swift County, there's a sliver of disagreement about hiring a public affairs firm to lobbying for the re-opening of the prison, the Swift County Monitor reported last week in County votes 4-1 to hire PR firm for prison effort:

Swift County’s Board of Commissioners voted 4 to 1 to hire Goff Public, a Twin Cities public relations and lobbying company, to help it persuade state legislators to house prisoners at the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton.

Only Commissioner Eric Rudningen, District 5-Kerkhoven, voted against allocating $10,000 from the County Board Discretionary Funds to retain Goff Public. Commissioners Gary Hendrickx, District 1-Appleton; Ed Pederson, District 2-north Benson; Pete Peterson, District 3-south Benson; and Joe Fox, District 4-Hegbert Township voted in favor of the expenditure.

Currently, the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) has about 550 state prisoners in county jails throughout the state, Pogge-Weaver told the board at its meeting Aug. 4. “The DOC doesn’t believe that is an effective way to deal with their inmate population.” The problem is only going to get worse. The DOC estimates that by 2018 there could be 900 to 1,000 inmates in facilities outside their system, he added.

To address the problem of an expanding prison population, the DOC will ask the Minnesota Legislature to approve $85 to $100 million in bonding in 2016 to expand its facility at Rush City by 500 beds, Pogge-Weaver said.

The county has further heard that the DOC will request further bonding in 2018 or 2020 for a second 500-bed expansion, he said.

With the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton vacant, our region has a compelling story for use of this existing facility versus constructing of new prison space, Pogge-Weaver told commissioners.

The results showed that offenders who had been incarcerated in a private prison had a greater hazard of recidivism in all 20 models, and the recidivism risk was significantly greater in eight of the models. The evidence presented in this study suggests that private prisons are not more effective in reducing recidivism, which may be attributable to fewer visitation and rehabilitative programming opportunities for offenders incarcerated at private facilities.

An earlier study in 2003 of prisoner perceptions of those opportunities includes a contrast of the actual services themselves.

The issues of "fewer visitation opportunities" is also a problem for securely transporting the prisoners to and from the prison itself, as Appleton, on the state's extreme western prairies, is not served by a four-lane highway. This aspect would remain for the Appleton facility regardless of who owns the campus, which originally a city-owned, non-profit private prison facility.

We're hearing that alternatives to having CCA operate the prison include having the corporation lease or sell the facility to the state. It's been suggested before. The 1994 legislature ordered a study, released in 1995, of the feasibility of the state purchasing the city-owned prison facility, which at the time could house 516 inmates. Pages 4 and 5 consider impact on visitation and the cost of the seven-to-eight hour round-trips to the Twin Cities (pdf here).

The little southwestern Minnesota town of Appleton (pop. 1,500), which built a private prison six years ago hoping to grow its own jobs, is selling the operation after being in default for years.

But the prison remains open and operating at near full capacity, housing 508 prisoners from Minnesota, Idaho and Colorado, according to Warden Hoyt Brill, who arrived two years ago from Colorado with a contingent of inmates.

"We'd like to be around for a while and this looks like our best option," said Brill, referring to the proposed sale of the prison to Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. of America, the nation's largest private prison operator.

The proposed sale, for $22.5 million, is outlined in Ramsey County District Court documents filed by the trustee for bondholders who bought $28.4 million in Appleton city bonds in 1990 to finance the prison. The city loaned the proceeds to Appleton Prison Corp., a nonprofit firm that built and operated the institution. . . .(Nexis All-News Database, accessed August 20, 2015)

Jul 28, 2015

UPDATE: We just received a call from East Central Minnesota Labor Council Jane Conrad, who said that despite assurances to the St. Cloud Police Department that the event was cancelled, the VFW allowed an anti-refugee speaker from Willmar to speak in Brantsner's place and the event continued.

Another union activist attended the event--which reportedly is still going on--and reported back to Conrad.

One of the curious conservations that the group had considered Conrad's organizing of a counterprotest; apparently, those attending are under the impression that the Minnesota AFL-CIO supports their agenda and they will be complaining to the state federation headquarters in St. Paul. Given that the area labor councils are part of the state AFL-CIO, we find this assumption laughable.

Needless to say, the statement that the event would be cancelled on the part of the post and the distribution of this promise by the St. Cloud Police isn't the sort of thing that builds trust. [End update]

After learning about California Minuteman Ron Brantsner's controversial views about refugees and immigrants, the VFW Granite post in St. Cloud, Minnesota, has cancelled hosting the event.

"The SCPD Community Crime Impact Team (CCIT) has met with members organizing the speaking event at VFW Post #428 and with the management of the VFW.

- CCIT specializes in community outreach and event planning for incidents in the City of St. Cloud and after conversing with management of the St. Cloud VFW Post #428 they determined that they were unaware of any controversy concerning the speaker and that their bylaws will not allow the event to be held at their venue.

- VFW management has advised that it will remain open for regular customers and will advise persons who arrive for the speaking event that it has been cancelled.

Being personally familiar with that overall area I can advise that minimal public parking and public area exists. Much of the area consists of private property. My suggestion would be that any gathering of the public that might still be under consideration related to this now cancelled event should be held at a location in St. Cloud that would be conducive to a public gathering and in compliance with any regulatory requirements."

According to sources, Jane Conrad, organizer for the East Central Minnesota Labor Council, worked with community members to put together a Unite Saint Cloud counter rally after hearing about Brantsner's presentation. When she contacted the St. Cloud Police Department to let them know about the lawful protest, the SPPD contacted the managers of the VFW Granite Post.

Conrad told Bluestem that the room where Branstner was to have spoken was reserved by a private individual and the VFW Granite Post had no idea about his views. As the email from the police department indicates, the event violated the veterans group's bylaws.

Affiliated with the California Minutemen, Brantsner has been speaking out for years against immigrants and refugees in Minnesota. His target has shifted from Latino immigrants to Somali refugees in recent years.

May 11, 2015

Last year, as part of the Women's Economic Security Act (WESA), the Minnesota legislature expanded unpaid parental leave for parents.

The votes against the legislation by Senators Dan Hall, Paul Gazelka, Roger Chamberlain and Branden Petersen are incorporated in a hilariously scathing "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" segment on paid family leave.

Feb 16, 2015

This was part of the social contract America made with its people eighty years ago in the New Deal: Workers will receive a minimum wage. It may not be enough to make you rich, but you will have enough to afford necessities for your family – food, housing, clothing, medical care.

We are far from fulfilling that social contract. Economic hardship affects many: one of every three Minnesota children are in families struggling to make ends meet. One in ten households have times when family members go hungry because they have no money for food. There are working people who go “home” from their jobs to a homeless shelter at night, because they cannot afford housing.

Many of these families feel they have been left behind, as others accumulate ever-greater wealth. Their frustration leaves some with a sense of helplessness and apathy, even about voting.

Despite ample political rhetoric about “supporting the middle class,” neither party has had the courage to back initiatives to end poverty, even among working families.

The public believes working people should not live in poverty. The only public opinion poll I have seen on the issue showed a virtual consensus – 94% of Americans agree with the statement: “As a country, we should make sure people who work full-time are able to earn enough to keep their families out of poverty.”* People understand that this is a matter of fairness.

Back in 2007, Minnesota created a legislative commission to examine how we could end poverty by the year 2020. Our bipartisan commission recognized that justice for low income workers means those workers need higher wages, some other means of paying for necessities, or a combination of both.

Since the Poverty Commission issued its final report in 2009, Minnesota has made little progress with the exception of last year's increase in the minimum wage. With a public consensus that workers should not live in poverty, it is time we take action.

The phased-in increase in the minimum wage would continue beyond the $9.50/hour in 2016. The legislation would add 75¢/hour every year from 2017 through 2020, when it would reach $12.50/hour.

Even at that wage level, some workers will not be able to pay for basic needs, so the legislation would more than double Minnesota's Working Family Tax Credit – a credit designed to help working people make ends meet. The credit would jump to 120% of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. A one parent, one child family earning about $23,000 would receive $3000 from the Minnesota credit (up from about $940 – a boost of about $2000/year.)

The bill increases access to affordable childcare, eliminating the 7,000 family waiting list for the Child Care Assistance Program, and substantially increasing the payments so low income parents have a better choice of providers and childcare providers get decent compensation.

To help create jobs, the proposal reestablishes the MEED (Minnesota Emergency Employment Development) jobs program, a simple but highly effective initiative to assist small businesses in hiring the unemployed. MEED, which was created during a recession thirty years ago, has been described as the most effective job creation program in any state in the last half century.

Although this particular bill does not address health care needs, in conjunction with proposed universal health care legislation, this legislation would help lift all workers and their families out of poverty.

The Worker Dignity bill (SF 890) will improve the lives of all low income workers and their families, boost their productivity, and stimulate the economy.

It is not a radical approach. It would not deliver economic security for workers immediately. However, it would be the biggest step towards fulfilling the goal of the Minnesota’s Commission to End Poverty by 2020.

Now, let’s talk real politics. This bill is not likely to pass because it would require both businesses and government to do more. In politics, rhetoric about supporting workers is easier than action, especially when the idea of a living wage for all workers is considered unrealistic.

That must change. The current reality, where some hardworking people can’t afford food or housing, is not acceptable. This is a matter of justice. And, with more than nine of ten people supporting wage justice, it is a fight we can win.

The Minnesota AFL-CIO and some union partners outlined an array of law changes Wednesday that they say would give employees more recourse. Advocates say the proposal being introduced soon at the Capitol would increase penalties on employers found to have violated pay laws and enable affected employees to recoup three times their lost wages.

The bill would allow for employees to file confidential complaints of so-called wage theft to be investigated by the Department of Labor and Industry.

Labor groups could find a tougher time with their agenda this session because Republicans now have House control. . . .